New Portishead Album

"Third" (Portishead)

"Portishead" (Portishead)

"Dummy" (Portishead)

Cool! I had wondered what had happened to Portishead. I played the hell out of their first two albums.

This is how the new Portishead album starts. A friendly voice says something vaguely introductory in Brazilian-Portuguese. There's a bit of subdued chatter in the background, and the reassuring plink of a distant piano, as if you're arriving at a half-empty Latin nightclub. Then a huge pummelling beat comes in (Geoff Barrow insists that he was 'massively unhappy' with this rhythm for many long months, but it sounds pretty unstoppable now). Sawing strings summon up a demonic echoing cowbell, before this in turn gives way to ominous slashes of spaghetti western guitar - the sort of thing you'd expect to hear just before a hired gun played by Lee Van Cleef accidentally shoots an innocent child.
Article continues

Two minutes and 10 seconds in, the scene is finally set for Beth Gibbons's vocal to make its entrance. But however effectively the listener has been softened up for this momentous event, no one will quite be prepared for the pitch of ecstatic anguish at which her voice announces itself. 'Wounded and afraid inside my head,' Beth flails poignantly, as a Tardis seems to take off in the background, 'falling through changes ... Did you know what I lost? Do you know what I wanted?'
It's stunning stuff. And this is just the opening number. Later on, once Third (for that is the title: it is, after all, Portishead's third album - well, if you don't count the live one) is properly up and running, it features a run of five or six songs which are not just worthy of the records this band were making 10 or even 14 years ago, but feel like the sonic destination which they were always meant to arrive at.

[Click to read more details Light in the west | Electronic | guardian.co.uk Music]

Not sure when the album is going to be released, but the name of it, currently, is Portishead 3. I'll be looking forward to hearing it. Of course, I don't ingest drugs like I used to, so maybe the experience won't quite be the same....